Read as part of CBR16 Bingo: Tech. In addition to some of the tech developments set in this near-future pre-apocalyptic tale, one of the main subplots is an interactive video game the characters play that features heavily in the narrative.
This book started out interesting enough: we come upon a disaffected broke upper class Brooklyn couple, trying to recover from infertility and the loss of an infant. The husband has lost their money at a time of a bad economic downturn but is trying to hide it from his wife, who is hired to do an ad campaign that doesn’t really disguise its fascist intents. The dystopia is not yet upon them but it’s fast coming. Congress is debating Universal Basic Income as a means of providing large scale relief.
But after the first part, when the murder happens and the story expands, the writer doesn’t have much else besides random ideas he tosses to a host of uninteresting characters (including his leads, who he shelves for large parts of the story just to randomly bring them back). The book explores themes of privilege, income inequality, racism, and patriarchal violence but it doesn’t sit with them long enough to be considered anything beyond surface-y. I was relieved when it concluded.
Like Davey Davis’ X, the dystopia of permanent heat, flooding, tech breakdowns, etc. is very believable and probably bound to happen soon to us barring a miracle. But the story that suffuses these acute observations doesn’t congeal into anything interesting. So once again, it’s a book where the setting is a stage and the characters exist as walking polemics. Interesting in spots but ultimately disappointing.
